This is a bit random but is it possible that today Eustacia would have a diagnosis of Aspergers? I have a friend whose daughter has this condition and she is very like EBD's description of Eustacia: not able to cope socially, very clever in a focused kind of way but struggles with relationships. Also a very literal sense of right and wrong. Eustacia doesn't see reporting things as sneaking - she is just stating the truth. If you add that to the bereavement issues already touched upon in this thread, the poor girl didn't stand a chance.

I don't think she'd be an Asperger's candidate, as after her accident she completely changes, and is able to settle in and interact with people quite well. A social disability would persist even after reformation-by-injury.

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Ring the bells that still can ring; Forget your perfect offeringThere is a crack in everything; That's how the light gets in Anthem: Leonard Cohen

EMBD puts quite a lot of emphasis on Eustacia's upbringing being the origin of the problem "Both (her parents] had great theories on how to bring up children, and to these they subjected their only child, the unfortunate Eustacia"; there's also that chilling line where she says of Eustacia that on her mother's death "she had wept decorously for the woman who had had so much to do with her training".

EMBD seems to have had a considerable interest in child psychology, but she never cites any particular system, so I don't know which theories, if any, may have provided her with the inspiration for this story-line. Something pretty bleak, whatever they were, and apparently excluding any form of affection or sympathy for others: I wonder did the Benson parents even have some points in common with the von Stift parents about class and superior 'breeding'?

"...she had wept decorously for the woman who had had so much to do with her training".

Is this taken from the original or the Armada edition of the book? I ask because in the only version which I've read, which I've found online, the section in question reads:"In the preceding June Mrs. Benson had died of pneumonia. Eustacia had mourned properly."

I feel that "wept decorously" carries more of a suggestion of hypocrisy, of weeping for show, than "mourned properly", which to me feels like a suggestion of someone very, very constrained by an internalisation of the need to do what is right, regardless of other people's perceptions. (Which certainly fits the Eustacia we find in the rest of the book - we may disagree with her idea of what is right, but she certainly holds strongly to it, regardless of what other people might think.)

To me, the "wept decorously" shows someone who knows intellectually that you mourn for someone but doesn't actually feel anything much.

Similar is Eustacia's reaction to being sent to the CS. She "knows" that people are supposed to succor orphans and how they are supposed to do that but this doesn't translate into real life. It doesn't occur to her that she had any part to play in this, it is something that is supposed to be applied to her externally.

"...she had wept decorously for the woman who had had so much to do with her training".

Is this taken from the original or the Armada edition of the book? I ask because in the only version which I've read, which I've found online, the section in question reads:"In the preceding June Mrs. Benson had died of pneumonia. Eustacia had mourned properly."

I feel that "wept decorously" carries more of a suggestion of hypocrisy, of weeping for show, than "mourned properly", which to me feels like a suggestion of someone very, very constrained by an internalisation of the need to do what is right, regardless of other people's perceptions. (Which certainly fits the Eustacia we find in the rest of the book - we may disagree with her idea of what is right, but she certainly holds strongly to it, regardless of what other people might think.)

Can someone clarify which version comes from where?

Belated thanks, KB - I was elsewhere for most of that day.

Housemate, I'm gobsmacked at the difference! I hadn't realised that the Armada version was not only abridged but modified, never having read it (Eustacia was the one of the first CS books I ever owned, and that was so long ago - 1962! - that it was still in print and hardbacks were all you could get). I notice that the Friends of the Chalet School website here comments that this book has minor frequent cuts. I wonder if there are any others as significant as that in it?

Housemate, I'm gobsmacked at the difference! ... I notice that the Friends of the Chalet School website here comments that this book has minor frequent cuts. I wonder if there are any others as significant as that in it?

I wonder! Maybe if there's any other sentence that seems to show Eustacia in a very harsh light I could check it?

That particular sentence, by the way, just ends at "properly" in the version I have, and doesn't go on to add the part about "for the woman who had had so much to do with her training" - words which I think also give a sense of coldness around the relationship between Eustacia and her parents.

Yes, it's chilling, especially in the context of raising a child. I wonder if the parents were believers in Behaviourism, which basically meant showing no affection or praise to your children, but rather to treat them as rational beings at all times...